A young military scale modeler at work

Lippish P.13 ‘Prototype’

The Lippisch P.13 is one of the many odd projects designed by the Germans during the Second World War. It was to be an experimental ramjet-powered delta wing interceptor, designed around late 1944 by Alexander Lippisch and was powered by coal. It was first proposed that a wire-mesh basket which held the coal was to be mounted behind the nose air intake, protruding slightly into the airflow and was to be ignited by a gas burner. Although the design never made it off the drawing board, a wooden model was constructed for wind tunnel testing but wasn’t finished before the end of the war. Captured by the US forces, it was ordered for the DM-1 prototype test glider to be finished and tested. This showed that the design had an extraordinary stability when reaching Mach 2.6 and beyond, serving as a basis of many American aircraft designs like the F-106 Delta Dart.

This projects was part of a weekend build and it took me about 2 days to make. There is only one kit in the quarter scale branch when wishing to build this aircraft, being the old Mauve kit. When the company went bust, Revell re-released the kit in a boxing of their own. The age is surely visible when building the kit, but nonetheless it fits great and I didn’t need to sand to much. We also get recessed panel lines, which is uncommon for a kit of this age. On the other hand, there is a high lack of detail. Except for the instrument panel I replaced nearly everything, from the seat to the flight stick and some scratch build seat belts. Since none were ever constructed I had to come up with some markings, of which I took inspired from several German prototype markings.